Oh, dear.
In 1995, A small British firm known as Probe Entertainment- Seriously, that seemed like a good name?- was acquired by Acclaim following it’s successful work on the original Mortal Kombat home ports. One of the first of this joint-companies’ releases was a video game tie in for the Joel Schumacher Batman Forever. Released in fall of that year, This game and film combo were almost enough to make me question my loyalty for the Dark Knight.
At first glance, the Mortal Kombat engine shines through the glossy rubber batsuits pretty quickly. It’s actually an interesting idea- the game us the same “mo-cap” style and moves as the series, which gives the game a kind of gritty 16-bit realism, and with that, the game would focus more on fighting moves and hand to hand combat than the run and gun style most Batman games had used up to this point.
But things went very, very wrong.
To put it simply, the SNES and Genesis game was a broken experience with faulty mechanics that failed in spite of some really good effort and money being put behind it.
Allegedly running up a tab near a million dollars for green-screen technology and set pieces, Probe enlisted full costumes, props and essentially turned a warehouse into a sound stage to work on the game, complete with wire work and stunt platforms. Just like today, though, a big budget and a Triple-A developer don’t mean jack if you can’t get the damn thing to run right.
Specifically, the game falls apart on controls. Fighting is clunky, if functional, but trying to use the grappling hook, or move across obstacles, was ridiculous. Add to that some poor level design, and it makes it easy to get stuck, even in the first level. It does gain some points back for being a co-op two player, but even if you can get into some kind of groove with the fighting and platforming, the repetition will set in shortly after.
More than a bad game, this is a sad game. Sales-wise, it did respectably in it’s time, and sold well enough to warrant a Final Fight style arcade port, who’s greatest sin was being pedestrian as hell. It’s easy to beat on it for nostalgia sake, and complain that it lack the charm or fond memories of some of the other games, but really, it comes down to two reasons. First, the developers were really trying to do something special here. But, with the misfortune of being based on the beginning of the end for the first Batman anthology and having to work with a very reserved Warner Bros, the resources from the source material were not much help. Add to that a concept that was maybe a generation too early, and it’s a sure black eye for a group of guys who were admitted Batman fans. The second reason is that this game marks the final 16-bit Batman game, making his exit from the golden age of home console gaming a major downer.
Looking back on it, Batman Forever is easily viewed as the worst of the Batman games. And it continues to avoid “hipster cred” because it’s actually too broken to be a “so bad, it’s good” retro classic.
But it ain’t the worst Batman game where I’m concerned. We had to wait a couple more consoles for that train wreck.